Rating: 
Summary: Brave, special, rare person
Review: I admire this women for the strenght , courage, and integrity that is almost impossiable to find. An extrodinary lady that deserves the best in life.
Rating:
Summary: The part about the Mehta's was hysterical!
Review: I never laughed so hard...especially about the Mehta's dog! This book was well written and actually very humorous! A must read!
Rating: 
Summary: The Truth as I know it...
Review: I think the truth is somewhere in the middle.
The book was a fun read, and I must admit that I liked Susan by the end of it. But the book left too many unanswered questions... which are easy to answer if you assume Susan is a tremendous liar or an tremendous idiot.
With contempt of court, aren't you in jail at the judge's discretion? What's the penalty for perjury? Is it more than 18 months is prison? But if convicted of perjury, can't you appeal? You obviously can't appeal a comtempt citation. And if Susan was innocent, and Starr had given up trying to imprison her, why would a Clinton pardon mean anything?
I admire Susan's compassion for the inmates when in women's prison and how she identifies with their collective lack of guilt (they were all in the wrong place at the wrong time... just like Susan). But won't all convicts will tell you how innocent they are? Nor do I think that women's prison is like the big slumber party as Susan describes it to be.
And lastly, her monumental "defeat" of Starr's army... well whoopee. It will, I guess, be a footnote on a footnote in history.
If you hate Starr and love Clinton, this book will be perfect for you... but, remember, the truth is somewhere in the middle.
Rating:
Summary: Emotional catharsis
Review: I was disposed to like Whitewater figure and Kenneth Starr nemesis Susan McDougal before I ever read her book and have long felt that a justice system which rewards those who tell prosecutors what they want to hear (immunity, plea bargaining) and penalizes those who insist on their innocence or their right to a jury trial, is flawed. So I'm not exactly unbiased. But who is?
The first part of McDougal's emotionally engaging narrative covers childhood, then marriage to real estate developer and founder of the ill-fated Madison Guaranty S&L, Jim McDougal. The Marriage and various businesses failed and she embarked on a romance with Madison Guaranty employee then lawyer, Pat Harris, and a claustrophobic employee/friend relationship with Nancy Mehta.
Outgoing and shy, loud and retiring, depending on the company, McDougal does not come across as the sort of person to go to jail rather than answer questions. One minute her life is going along willy nilly, from one controlling, needy, demanding personality to another, when wham! Suddenly neurotic, vesuvial Mehta is charging her with grand larceny and the Office of the Independent Counsel is offering dire threats and deliverance from all - including the Mehta charges, which hardly seems within their purview. Friendly and likable, McDougal seems primarily characterized by her optimistic naivety. She even looks forward to her first session with the OIC: "I felt that there were a lot of false statements and ridiculous rumors, particularly about Madison, that I could help clear up."
But her get-out-of-jail-free card comes with a catch - testimony against the Clintons. McDougal does a fine job of describing her flabbergasted outrage and her dawning awareness of the trap closing around her. Aghast after the first Whitewater trial when she was convicted of things "I was not even aware had happened until ten years later," McDougal begins to fear the OIC will stop at nothing to get Clinton. It was not bravery, she says again, that made her clam up, but the certainty that Starr would indict her for perjury if she insisted on the truth - she didn't know anything bad about the Clintons. She knew she might go to jail for contempt, but she never dreamed it would be for the full 18 months allowable by law.
The second half - prison - is riveting, horrifying and inspiring. Her first jail was easy, comparatively. The food was lousy, but she made friends. The worst hardship was lack of reading material - the only book inmates were allowed was the Bible. But no sooner does she say on the phone, " `I could do the whole eighteen months here,' " than she's whisked off to a mental ward in a federal facility and from there to lockdown (23 hours a day solitary confinement) on "Murderer's Row". There were seven prisons in all, but however bad things got (sadistic guards, overflowing toilets, body cavity searches, sensory deprivation) McDougal always found some interest to sustain her - usually one or more of the inmates who, needless to say, all had lives immeasurably worse than hers.
On her release, the OIC filed criminal contempt and obstruction of justice charges against her and she still had the Mehta charges to face. Triumphing against both, McDougal spares an ounce of sympathy for Nancy Mehta, but her flush of victory against Starr and the OIC is unadulterated glee and great fun to read. In the end, McDougal says jail was good for her. She still hates the people who put her there and believes they were behind many of the special humiliations and privations she endured, but "there's no doubt in my mind that I'm a far better person than I was before."
Spiked with emotional peaks and valleys, McDougal's memoir is compulsively readable - and believable.
Rating:
Summary: The Strength of Silence
Review: In 'The Woman Who Wouldn't Talk', Susan McDougal demonstrates that silence can often be more potent than words, no matter how eloquent. The book is exceptional and the author captures the essence of courage with economy and moving insight. I was so impressed that I sent a copy to many of my friends, most of whom commented favourably. The one dissenting voice was from Jack Nicholson. After he'd received it, he called me and said, "Schwarz, you're kidding me, right? A woman who wouldn't talk? Come on, get a grip on reality. It's an urban myth. Next you'll be telling me that there's such a thing as a modest actor or a sober journalist. My friend, although I starred in 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest', the location was never my residence." He was still laughing hysterically as he hung up.'The Woman Who Wouldn't Talk' is essential reading.
Rating:
Summary: An Amazing and Courageous Woman
Review: McDougal's story deserves to be read by every person in America who has ever wondered why they should do the right and painful thing in the face of powerful enemies and overwhelming temptation to save oneself at the expense of another. This is a tale of heroines and heroes, of good friends and false friends, of villains and the lowest scum to ever stride a courtroom. Ken Starr and his cronies, and those in various jails and federal prisons, who tried to assist him in breaking the spirit of this courageous and honest woman, have much to answer. She was an ordinary woman who faced a difficult challenge with rare courage. Her story is an inspiration and a source of encouragement in these difficult political times. The tale is fascinating and well written, and you will keep thinking about the book after you put it down. Susan McDougal took the hit for a lot of people when she went to prison for refusing to talk about Whitewater, and the Clinton land deal that went bad. In reading this book, you get a strong sense of McDougal's honesty and integrity, and how difficult it must have been, in the presence of so much insanity, to maintain that integrity.
Rating:
Summary: A Woman of Courage
Review: Susan McDougal showed true courage in the face of a high power attack by the Ken Starr. It must have been a real shock to him and to his right wing political backers that she stood her ground. The most disturbing part of the book is that what Starr did was legal. He was able to keep her in jail for almost two years, move her from prison to prison, keep her in complete sensory deprivation and embarass her by showing her in public with chains. It gave me nighmares to think that something like this could be done to a person who has not been convicted of a crime. Starr wanted her as a stepping stone to get to the president but it got caught in his shoe. She did the right thing and I hope she has a good life from now on. As for Mr. Starr and his gang I hope that people remember what they did and keep reminding him that he did wrong.
Rating:
Summary: Ken Starr's and the OIC's obiturary
Review: Susan McDougal, a truly remarkable woman, has written a remarkable book. One is not often treated to examples of moral heroism in this day of "what's in it for me", but McDougal's story deserves to be read by every person in America who has ever wondered why they should do the right and painful thing in the face of powerful enemies and overwhelming temptation to save one's self at the expense of another. This is a tale of heroines and heroes, of good friends and false friends, of villians and the lowest scum to ever stride a court room. Ken Starr and his cronies, and those in various jails and federal prisons who tried to assist him in breaking the spirit of this courageous and honest woman, have much for which to answer. If there is a god who metes out punishment and reward at the end of our days, I would not want to occupy Ken Starr's, or any number of other OIC prosecutors' and FBI agents' coffins. Buy this book and read it. Read it to your children and your grandchildren. It will make you all better people, and it is a hell of a good read and a lot of fun!
Rating:
Summary: A Woman Who Knows the Score
Review: The most ridiculous complaint ever are those made by both men and women who fail to recognize the importance of gender discrimination in a world long acquainted with it, but who would self righteously ignore it, when it comes to the defense of other women and their vulnerable position in life. The fact that marriage exists in the first place is evidence of the fact that men seek control over all women in their lives, not just those who might threaten their authority and privacy. There has never been a time that women have had full control of their own lives so that they could either defend themselves, or that provides the opportunities that come standard on men. Women are always in defensive positions and that leads to bizarre results when women are placed in these awkward situations, neither able to defend principles of justice, nor to defend themselves in a world of overwhelming odds. That reality makes for the strangest of bedfellows, politically, or economically, and results in many women defending dumb and even cruel men for what the world would like to pronounce as no reason, but which, in fact, most know in their hearts. There has never been a time when women were as safe as men, regardless of their status, or position, public or private. For many women, it means a life of endurance as "sufferers," (a term long forgotten, but well applied to women with regard to public status), and often equally applicable in their private lives, for far too many. If the feminist movement or the women's suffrage movement means anything, its underlying basis reflects this desire of women to have the freedom to shed that yoke of compliance in order to be able to address the world as they see the men in their lives do, and with the gusto that is characteristic of those seductive commercials that claim that territory. That has never, and, in the foreseeable future, will never be the case for women, the crippled and handicapped creatures that God provided who so unwillingly fulfill that role to maintain male authority, and prominence. Since prominence and authority often project the territorial domain of males, it is not surprising that the author would willingly put herself in greater danger, intuitively, than she already feels in these high class power circles. Instead, she should be credited with knowing the substance of her situation, and having the courage to endure it, as most women have since time began. After all, boys will be boys, right? and we allow them that wide berth, at the expense of most women.
Rating: 
Summary: A great book for closed minds
Review: The only reason Susan McCrook wouldn't talk was she was afraid she'd end up taking an ADN (Arkansas dirt nap). Case closed.
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